“Run away from the company moving to Agile”

This is a fantastic set of comments on LinkedIn. LinkedIn groups are obviously, as we all know a bastion of common sense and knowledge (if there was a “Dripping With Sarcasm” WordPress theme, I’d turn it on just for this). This guy is pretty brilliant though.

Someone unrelated to our hero asks for some “traditional” (their parenthesis, not mine) QA folks for a survey of sorts.

Our hero, responds:

“Run away from the company moving to Agile. It is a mess, “dead end” methodology created to produce “whatever… as soon as possible” to please customers. It means “delivery” is a priority #1, not quality.”

Well, first of all, shipping, or “delivering”, should be everyone’s priority (just like quality!). Which is in part what Agile exists to address. Furthermore, I don’t know how Developing in Waterfall is, but Testing is a nightmare. You don’t have to tell this guy though (although you actually really do), because he’s a seasoned vet.

Me:

“Oh dear lord, Alex.”

Alex:

“Yes, I do. I am on the stage from Initial steps of Quality Assurance as a framework. So.. I know what I am talking about. I am enough old to be a witness of QA birth.:)) Agile is invention of developers to make testers responsible for unit testing and to share the responsibility if they created a bad code.:))”

What the whaaat?

Also, if I understand it correctly, Alex was actually there when “Quality Assurance” (one day I’ll win and no one will ever use that term again) was invented. Does he mean in terms of Software? Probably not. I think he means in general. In fact, our sources (dubious as they are), tell us that Alex was there to Test Michelangelo’s machines before Michelangelo even built them.

Which, quite ironically, was very-berry Agile of him.

But, according to his LinkedIn, he’s an “On high demand expert in QA, Process, Audit.”, though, so what do I know.

(Bolded ‘Process’ because, you know. Process.)

In the end what else could I do but pitch him the now industry standard Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory book Agile Testing. But in general this brings me back to my experiences at Codemash earlier this year where it was frighteningly obvious how frankly oblivious so many folks are to the benefits of Agile, especially those on the test side of things.

I hate calling people out like this, but come on dude. You are an experienced tester, probably a voice of authority for young professionals. It is downright irresponsible to make these uneducated and dangerous claims. Get a grip.
Here’s a link to the thread, and a screenshot of the comments, in case they get deleted.
*This once happened after I challenged a consultant on their claim that they do in fact assure quality and return 100% bug-free code.